Wiktionary

debris

See also: débris

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French débris, itself from dé- (“de-”) + bris (“broken, crumbled”), or from Middle French debriser (“to break apart”), from Old French debrisier, itself from de- + brisier (“to break apart, shatter, bust”), from Frankish *bristijan, *bristan, *brestan (“to break violently, shatter, bust”), from Proto-Germanic *brestaną (“to break, burst”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrest- (“to separate, burst”). Cognate with Old High German bristan (“to break asunder, burst”), Old English berstan (“to break, shatter, burst”), German bersten (“to burst”). More at burst.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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debris (uncountable)

  1. Rubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed.
    Synonyms: detritus; see also Thesaurus:debris
    • 2012 December 21, David M. Halbfinger, Charles V. Bagli, Sarah Maslin Nir, “On Ravaged Coastline, It’s Rebuild Deliberately vs. Rebuild Now”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      His neighbors were still ripping out debris. But Mr. Ryan, a retired bricklayer who built his house by hand 30 years ago only to lose most of it to Hurricane Sandy, was already hard at work rebuilding.
    • 2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL‎[2], number 948, archived from the original on 21 December 2020, page 43:
      But signalman Bridges was never to answer driver Gimbert's desperate question. A deafening, massive blast blew the wagon to shreds, the 44 high-explosive bombs exploding like simultaneous hits from the aircraft they should have been dropped from. The station was instantly reduced to bits of debris, and the line to a huge crater.
    • 2023 January 16, “California’s flooding, in pictures”, in CNN‎[3], archived from the original on 17 March 2023:
      Melissa Foley clears debris in her neighborhood as the San Lorenzo River rises in Felton on Saturday, January 14.
  2. Litter and discarded refuse.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:trash
    • 2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist‎[4], volume 408, number 8845, archived from the original on 8 March 2023:
      [The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, […].
  3. (geology) Large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Anagrams

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